Previews

The Lord of the Rings Online: Rise of Isengard Preview

A sense of impending doom overshadows the beta for The Lord of the Rings Online's Rise of Isengard expansion, thick and heavy as a Ringwraith's cloak. Clans fight to retain skittish populations, chieftains rush to action without securing defenses, and the enemy seems like the only faction that has its act together. Judging from the present shape of the expansion, it's hard not to wonder if this narrative might mirror the state of affairs at Turbine on the eve of the release of Star Wars: The Old Republic and Guild Wars 2 in the coming months.

Indeed, The Lord of the Rings Online: Rise of Isengard might be the first major expansion for LOTRO since the massively multiplayer online role-playing game went free-to-play last year, but it feels more like a generous patch. You can explore fabled zones such as Dunland, the Gap of Rohan, and the vale of Isengard on your way to the new level cap of 75, but you won't encounter a new player-versus-player battleground. You can fight a bearded dragon of the non-Australian variety in a new 25-man raid, but you won't experience any new instanced dungeons at launch (although you will later in the year). Veteran Middle-earthers might enjoy the extensive tweaks for almost every class, while simultaneously balking at the absence of a new playable class and a new gameplay mechanic. For an expansion that's been in the works for around a year now, Rise of Isengard occasionally feels rushed and incomplete.

That doesn't mean it's dull. Rise of Isengard preserves LOTRO's reputation for nerdly grandeur, even while feeling smaller than previous expansions. You'll pick up much of the adventure while questing among the hardscrabble hills of Dunland, best known as the home of the filthy rabble that the wizard Saruman roused about halfway through Peter Jackson's film version of The Two Towers. The unwashed swarm is a little more articulate here, and you'll spend several levels dickering with the various factions. But while Dunland feels like a region worthy of an expansion, the Gap of Rohan and Isengard feel like cramped subzones. An epic quest line that pulls you down into the bowels of Orthanc alleviates the feeling somewhat, but once you're done, you're left with a narrow river valley and a thorn patch until the next content update.

Much like World of Warcraft's upcoming cosmetic overhaul and Rift's generous half-birthday celebration, Turbine's decision to release this merely decent expansion on September 27 seems suspiciously like a ploy to seduce players who might be thinking of ditching Tolkien for Lucas. If so, it could still work -- particularly if Rise of Isengard is but the foundation of a cascade of small, rewarding content releases, and not an expansion that follows the model of Mines of Moria and the Siege of Mirkwood. Yet even while I find myself rediscovering how richly rewarding LOTRO's world can be, I can't help but worry that this expansion lacks the urgency that should come naturally with any appearance of Saruman and his phallic fortress. Now is the time to kick Tolkien's story into hyperdrive, but Turbine seems content to turn a mere pretty page.

How did it come to this?

Spy Guy says: I'd say it came to this because... well, everybody's afraid of Star Wars. Then again, LOTRO's free-to-play model puts it in a unique position, compared to other Old Republic competitors like World of Warcraft and Rift. Do you think Rise of Isengard will help LOTRO whether the coming storm?